95 Slide corner the next on a busy block to become home to mixed-use development

Here is another watering hole you can add to the roster of Capitol Hill bars where the patrons know the days are numbered before development brings last call.

CHS has learned that the property owners of the corner of Harvard and Pike have plans for a six-story, mixed-use development joining a block already in full construction Beast Mode.

The corner today is home to 95 Slide, local investor and entrepreneur Marcus Lalario’s sports bar born of the former Hunters Gatherers Lodge and the War Room clubs. It will likely be a year or two before construction can begin given the timeline of similar projects in the neighborhood.

The early plans for the development call for construction of a “30,000 sq ft, 6-story, mixed use building with 70 units and no parking spaces.”

The Pike Motorworks Building will be built with a diverse array of commercial spaces for lease. Ranging from ~300 s.f. street-front retail nooks to sprawling restaurant and bar areas with +22′ ceilings, timber beams, south-facing patio space and exposed brick, Pike Motorworks will be the hottest retail location on Capitol Hill.

Three underground levels of parking will make room for around 225 cars.

Interesting neighbors: the layout for the ground floor of Pike Motorworks

A company backed by the family of Seattle restaurant owner George “Papou” Serpanos owns the 95 Slide property east of the Pike Motorworks project and is currently moving the new project at the corner of Harvard and Pike forward working with Jeannette Architects. We’ll reach out to see if we can learn more about the plans and the timing. Pho Le’s restaurant also calls the corner home.

Rendering of what the construction around Linda’s will look like… any day now

While Pike Motorworks has taken up most of the block where a BMW dealership once called home, the corners and a few chunks were held onto by landowners. On the northwest corner, the building home to Linda’s Tavern and bodega the Pine Food Store also still stands with no announced plans, yet, for a development to rise in step with the Pike Motorworks walls surrounding it. Tavern owner Linda Derschang recently revealed she negotiated a one-year demolition notice clause in her most recent lease for the space that requires her landlord to give her advanced notice of any sale of the property. Her rent also doubled, she noted.

On the northeast corner, a seven-story project at the corner of Pine and Harvard is also nearing completion. Much-loved pizza and bar spot Bill’s Off Broadway tells CHS it plans to be back at the corner it called home for 39 years before kick-off on the 2015 NFL season. That project, like Pike Motorworks, is also taking advantage of the Pike/Pine program that allows developers to build with extra height in exchange for preserving the look and feel of street level facades.

Though both have hosted thousands of Capitol Hill sports fans over the years, 95 Slide and Bill’s are cut from much different cloth. 95 Slide has managed to hold onto some of its velvet rope and dance club roots with an emphasis on reserving VIP tables for popular events like ultimate fighting that moved beyond the more traditional sports bar fare of the NFL, etc. Over on E Olive Way, Kessler’s has also opened up as a TV sports-focused venue but you probably won’t find any VIP tables at the “catch-all” sports bar. Meanwhile, adding RuPaul Drag Race and reality TV programming to the “sports” mix seems like a sure hit if requests for ideas for places to watch sent to @jseattle are any indication.

With nothing more than early filings in the process, 95 Slide will likely be part of the neighborhood for several more seasons. If you want to plan a bittersweet bar crawl, add it to a night with stops at the Rhino Room — development info here — and the Redwood — here — as you ponder mortality and whether or not to have another beer.

Bob, It’s unlikely that any spaces would be ‘available’ to residents of new building at the 95 slide site. Most buildings, especially new ones have strict policies of not renting parking to people outside their building. Besides it’s just silly to allow a building to not put garage space in.

Couldn’t be happier to read this. 95 Slide attracts some of the worst clientele in the entire neighborhood and has no respect for any of the nearby businesses or residents. Now if they just close early, it will be even better. Good riddance!

(Big) Little boxes on the hillside, (Big Little boxes made of ticky tacky, (Big) Little boxes on the hillside, (Big) Little boxes all the same. There’s a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one, And they’re all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same.

This place contributes nothing to the positive character of the hill and has always seemed, from the outside, to be quite tolerant of the most intolerant elements of our neighborhood’s nighttime guests. I’ll be more than glad to see it, and the perpetually disgusting sidewalk mess in front of it every morning, gone.

Oh yes, that long gone Brass Connection; 30 plus years ago, the Hills answer to the quest for an upscale Gay Nightclub, circa Portland or Vancouver B.C. It may have been noisy at times but it was truly part of the Hill, it had for the times a gathering of the beautiful people, didn’t have a lot of bad acts going on after closing. Like the now gone Thumpers, one of the few places in town which had a decent bar with a better food menu. I remember sitting in the old Baghdad Cafe, almost directly across the street on a sunny late Spring Sunday and while looking out their window saw a tall thin man in a flowery Mother’s Day print dress, with straw bonnet, garnished with a floral arrangement, carrying a large bouquet of Spring like blossoms, gliding along a quiet Pike Street at Broadway, powered by those laced up roller skates as he made his way serenely down Pike….ah the Seattle and The Hill of yesterdays. On a Sunday, very quiet to the business and busyness compared to what you see today.

I think the point that boozecruise is trying to make is that noise is one thing, but that’s only one of the things that makes 95 Slide an awful neighbor. The clientele on weekends is absolutely awful. In the 6 years I’ve lived across the street from them, I can’t even count anymore how many physical fights and people getting arrested that I’ve witnessed, and the staff does nothing about it. Not to mention that after 2:00am, they let people just hang out right outside of the bar in giant masses, and they completely trash the entire area for the next 2 hours while they attempt to sober up enough to go home. I actually like the night life scene around here, but 95 Slide contributes absolutely nothing to it, unless you count reinforcing negative stereotypes on bro’s and woo girls.

I agree. Boozecruise didn’t really mention the noise….probably he/she accepts that to some degree in that “nightlife” area. It’s all the other antisocial behaviors (fighting, puking, etc) that are unacceptable.

Danny is 100% correct. I don’t mind the noise, I would have left long ago if I did. I do mind the complete lack of respect from the establishment and their patrons for anyone and anything on the block. The masses at 2 am Danny mentioned are absolutely insane. More often than not police have to line up on the sidewalk to prevent people from taking over the entire street while “security” or whatever from 95 Slide do nothing. Oh and if you like firecrackers at random times of the year live near 95 Slide.

I just remember talking to a bartender at The Canterbury a couple of years ago about people who moved in above the bar and then started complaining about noise levels from people smoking outside. There’s something really disturbing to me about new residents to Capitol Hill who move into an apartment in the thick of the nightlife scene and then are angry when it won’t conform to them to their wishes. Firecrackers are one thing, but in the 10+ years I’ve lived on Capitol hill, Pike/Pine has ALWAYS been rowdy and loud on the weekends, and if you didn’t consider that first before moving in, then you’re just foolish. People go to that area to have fun — if you want a quiet neighborhood, move to Bellevue.

With expensive apartments rising all around 95 Slide, its days were probably numbered anyway. No one in the new buildings was going to want to live right above a rowdy bar with a rooftop deck like that.

I was told that when that building was the gay disco called The Brass Connection, that it was the first gay bar on Capitol Hill. Before that I was told that most gay bars in Seattle were located in Pioneer Square. So sad to see a building with so much history in the gay community go. I guess that is progress

“Tugs Belltown” was on first ave before it moved up on the hill. Also the place was known as the “Brass Door” before they added a restaurant and changed the ‘Door’ to ‘connection’ Had a lot of fun in both of those places in the early 80’s.

Awwww. I remember when it was BLU. It was one of the few bars that I could get into with my fake ID. I remember being 18, in a new city, visiting my first gay bar and being so nervous and excited at the same time (it was a terrible fake). I think I still have a matchbook from that first night I took home as a souvenir. I know it has been a lot of different places since BLU but that’s what the space will always be to me.

I actually liked 95 Slides to watch sporting events especially with the lack of sports bars on the Hill, but I never visited the place at night. And I also gaffed at the “No Parking” statement – how is that possible?!?

lol at saying 95/HG/Warroom didn’t add anything to the nightlife of Cap Hill. Could you be more clueless? Go live in the dead ass part of Belltown or something. That place has been throwing legendary nights since long before you came to the hill.

Wasn’t it the Brass Door, then the Connection, then the Brass Connection? Those days are a blur ;-) It tried to be a bit hoity-toity at first, but then in it’s last days as the Brass Connection it lost all of it’s aspirations to glamor and has fun theme nights. Monday night was 75 cent well drinks, and EVERYONE on the hill was there: Gay, straight, and everything in-between.

R Place used to be on the same block, down on the corner. Then they moved to their current location, which was developed by the Tugs folks, but never occupied by them.

CHS CALENDAR

With one exception, we will be meeting there the 3rd Monday of the month from 6:00 – 7:30 for the rest of the year. Thank you to Capitol Hill Housing for making the space available.Share:TwitterFacebookRedditEmailPrint

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